Melting ice drives global mass redistribution

If you don’t believe in global warming, then you most likely won’t be aware that one of its least obvious effects is a very small slowdown in the earth’s rotation. And unlike the lethal droughts, heat waves and floods currently sweeping the planet, this one second lapse has no harmful effects at this point.

The cause of the phenomenon is the shifting of huge masses of water as ice melts rapidly at both ends of the planet. The ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica are several miles thick, enough mass to exert a strong gravitational pull on the oceans. The global redistribution of weight is actually slowing Earth’s rotation minutely, which may result in the elimination of a “leap second” later this decade.

Greenland Is Shedding 33 Million Tons of Ice… Per Hour

None of this is shocking in the greater scheme of things: the planet’s rotation speed is also affected by natural phenomenon such as volcanos, earthquakes  tidal forces, and changes in wind patterns. 

Quoted in Scientific American, Geophysicist Duncan Agnew said: “This is another one of those ‘this has never happened before’ things that we’re seeing from global warming: the idea that this effect is large enough to change the rotation of the entire Earth.” Duncan is co-author of the research just reported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

More immediate climate developments are summarized here.

“This is another one of those ‘this has never happened before’ things that we’re seeing from global warming: the idea that this effect is large enough to change the rotation of the entire Earth.”

– Geophysicist Duncan Agnew, Scripps.

 

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